[HN Gopher] Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad ...
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Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network
Author : redbell
Score : 231 points
Date : 2022-08-19 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| soneca wrote:
| This narrative consultant created a narrative narrating that a
| big company used a narrative to bring them more money to bring
| him more money.
| [deleted]
| timssopomo wrote:
| I'm an iOS user and spent 6 years working in the bowels of
| adtech. I'm generally skeptical of the industry. Apple's posture
| and position here seems like a net good for me as a user.
|
| Apple's and Facebook's approaches are totally different. Facebook
| vacuumed up reams of data from themselves and third parties and
| spat it back out into the industry indiscriminately. It _did_
| likely allow some niche businesses to reach target audiences. It
| _also_ created and enabled a rube goldberg machine of third
| parties to access behavioral data in a way that likely made it
| personally identifiable. The same was true of most third party
| platforms. Cookies were fundamentally broken and users have no
| idea what data they were creating and no meaningful control of
| how it was being consumed (or by whom). All sorts of harm was
| done in ways that was difficult to quantify.
|
| Apple giving individuals meaningful control over their data
| within Apple's ecosystem and protecting anonymity at the boundary
| of their platform is a net good. Apple's segmentation and
| targeting of users is fundamentally different than cookie based
| targeting utilizing 3P data. The fact that this hurt parties who
| unknowingly relied on 3P data in good faith is a sad externality,
| but nobody should lose sleep over it. I wouldn't feel bad about
| mom and pop groceries losing revenue from cigarette sales either.
| kornhole wrote:
| Google pays Apple about $15B a year to be integrated into their
| products. Since Google is primarily advertising, why isn't that
| considered advertising revenue for Apple?
| kernal wrote:
| Has the actual number been disclosed? It seems whenever someone
| mentions this the number keeps getting higher and higher.
| kornhole wrote:
| It has been rising every year. Last year was $15B and this
| year it seems to be about $20B.
| https://dazeinfo.com/2022/01/05/google-pays-apple-for-not-
| la...
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Title should be "Apple surpassed an estimate of $3.5B in annual
| revenue from its ad network".
| flixing wrote:
| Apple is the biggest hypocrite of the last decade. They
| manipulate press, users and regulators with this privacy
| narrative.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| The tweets are stupid.
|
| They built this ad revenue by doing it the right way, not
| stealing data on a massive scale and abusing it.
| seydor wrote:
| Just stop using apps.
| oneplane wrote:
| For what reason?
| criddell wrote:
| So that Meta and the other underdog companies can better
| monetize and direct your attention.
| postalrat wrote:
| Because apps more access and more power to track and ruin
| your day than PWAs do.
| EGreg wrote:
| Because seydor told you. He sey and you dor.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The more apple expands the more risk they will get from anti
| trust activity.
| jeppester wrote:
| Apple should either be forced to allow third party stores, or
| they should not be allowed to leverage their store to gain unfair
| advantages. Whether it's about forcing their SSO solution,
| forcing their payment solution, forcing their (inferior) browser
| engine, Apple apps showing up first in the store, or disallowing
| personalized ads only for third parties.
|
| I don't understand why anyone defend these practices when they
| are so obviously anti-competitive. But as usual lots of people
| think it's okay because Apple are the good guys and everyone else
| are the bad guys.
|
| Usually the good guys don't need unfair advantages in order to
| win.
| warning26 wrote:
| _> I don 't understand why anyone defend these practices when
| they are so obviously anti-competitive. But as usual lots of
| people think it's okay because Apple are the good guys and
| everyone else are the bad guys._
|
| Sounds like a correct understanding to me; Apple == good, Not
| Apple == bad. Fanboyism is a powerful thing.
| fny wrote:
| Wait... do I hear this correctly... while Apple blocks others
| from using this data, Apple can use this data for its own ad
| network?
|
| Isn't there an antitrust issue here?
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| You know you're a big company when 3.5 billion USD is less than
| 1% of your total annual revenue.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| The numbers are mind boggling. Airpods alone does more revenue
| than Twitter, Spotify, and Square combined [1]. And that was
| back in 2020..
|
| [1] https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/advice/airpods-revenue-
| vs-...
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I wanted to love Airpods, but the fall out of my ears, even
| when I'm sitting still. The linked article doesn't mention
| Beats By Dre, so I'm guessing Beats sales are not included in
| that $23B/year number. I wonder what is the annual for Beats.
| I bought a pair of the Powerbeats Pro that go over the ear &
| I quite like them.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| > but the fall out of my ears,
|
| I guess it's just how true-wireless headphones work. It is
| designed for most common shaped ears. And if your ear did
| not meet it. All you can do is finding something else.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > but the fall out of my ears, even when I'm sitting still.
|
| That's mind boggling to me. I basically have mine in 24/7
| including my daily run and while I am sleeping. They
| basically never fall out of my ears, and they somehow made
| them so comfortable that I don't even notice them and have
| a mini panic attack when I see they're not in the case.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| This is a mind boggling stat
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| As an Apple investor, I am happy to seem them grow an advertising
| business.
|
| Human attention is the ultimate analog resource. Throughout our
| lifetime, it will stay in high demand. It cannot be inflated away
| or commoditized.
|
| What I don't get is: How can Apple prevent or even detect that
| other apps or websites tell Facebook about what you do?
|
| If I go to example.com and example.com sends fingerprinting and
| useage information about me to one of facebooks servers - how
| would Apple know?
| thomasahle wrote:
| > how would Apple know?
|
| I don't think they can. As far as I understand what they
| blocked was the ability of the Facebook app to send Metadata to
| the website that the user arrived by the action of clicking an
| ad. They also blocked the website being able to reply to the
| Facebook app whether the user bought anything. This way users
| og Facebook ads aren't able to see whether their ads are
| effective, which lower the value of them.
|
| In principle Facebook and the website could store these events
| (ad clicking and item buying) on their own servers, and just
| synchronize once in a while. I don't know if they are working
| on this or it already exists.
|
| However, Apple could threaten to kick the Facebook app of the
| platform if it provides this "service" to advertisers.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > As an Apple investor, I am happy to seem them grow an
| advertising business.
|
| An an Apple user, I am not. And I'm getting closer and closer
| to jumping ship on the whole Apple ecosystem. I wonder if this
| is a wise long-term strategy for their brand.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| They wouldn't, but until recently they provided explicit
| functionality that allowed apps to access a persistent
| identifier so advertising SDKs in those apps could link
| activities happening in between apps, something that's not
| normally possible due to app sandboxing.
|
| Now they've made that identifier explicitly opt-in (it prompts
| the user on first run) so if the user declines, advertisers
| have to fall back on probabilistic methods such as heuristics
| to try and link sessions together (which is harder especially
| if other countermeasures such as anti-fingerprinting, IP
| anonymisation with Private Relay, etc are used).
| thumbsup-_- wrote:
| I don't understand the point of this thread. Apple never said
| that advertising is bad. They just said tracking users across web
| is bad. When I use FB app, FB can still use my activity in their
| app to show me relevant ads, which they do. Apple can do the same
| but their prompt gives users the ability to turn that
| personalization off as well. This is different from tracking and
| apple is giving a choice where FB and Google aren't.
| warning26 wrote:
| _> Apple can do the same but their prompt gives users the
| ability to turn that personalization off as well._
|
| Yes, and consider that Apple allows themselves to refer to
| tracking with soft words like "personalization" while forcing
| everyone else to use the scary "tracking" word. Apple should be
| showing the same "tracking" prompt for themselves as everyone
| else.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Pretty sure you can disable personalization in Google as well
| (no idea about fb)
| thomasahle wrote:
| Of course. Everyone allows that these days:
| https://m.facebook.com/help/568137493302217
|
| Except maybe Tiktok?
| kryptiskt wrote:
| But advertising is bad, it's just lucrative. I never want to
| see an ad when I use my phone, every single ad contributes to a
| worse experience. Every dollar that Apple manages to squeeze
| out of ads will come at the cost of making their devices worse.
| They could have resisted this and concentrated on making
| gigantic profits from building devices.
|
| If they can't say no to money, why don't they go into porn
| instead? They can't be too good for it, the ad business is far
| slimier than that.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| There are some factual error. "services" is more than ADs. Apple
| One is one of them.
| [deleted]
| pupppet wrote:
| If only we had some kind of medium better-suited for long-form
| text. A place to write text that isn't interrupted every 280
| characters of text. A "web log", if you will.
| jcuenod wrote:
| But with these ads, you're not the product.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Told ya!
| idk1 wrote:
| It's a shame Apple are going down the ad route, this is what the
| Stocks app on MacOS looks like - https://i.imgur.com/xGrzfyL.png
|
| I'd be ok if it was a big 'Diet Coke' or other big brand app, but
| low level spam being injected into first party apps is just not
| on, it might have made more revenue but at what detriment to the
| brand value? Over time I think more ad revenue is going to equal
| more brand damage in 1st party apps, and that might even leak to
| brand damage for Apple.
|
| Edit - Would like to add some context, Business News by Apple
| News is the first item open when you open that app, and this ad
| is below top stories, so depends if it's visible when you open it
| on your screen height, I did scroll for 1 second after opening
| the app to see this.
| morcheeba wrote:
| That's not what Stocks looks like - you scrolled down about two
| pages to get to the ad. You make it look like the ad is first.
| https://imgur.com/a/t7ncKoc
| idk1 wrote:
| Oh yes sorry, I've edited my comment to add some context, I
| would stand by it is what Stocks looks like, as the app is
| Stocks and it looks like that. I did scroll just past the top
| stories to take the screenshot. I didn't mean to mislead at
| all, I do agree I did make it look like that, not
| intentionally.
|
| Also maybe the add disappears for Apple News+ subscribers?
| I'm not subscribed to Apple News+ so I can't speak to that.
| morcheeba wrote:
| Cool, thanks! I use Stocks on a variety of platforms and
| never seem to scroll down far enough to see the ad, so I
| had to check to see why my experience was vastly different.
| I'm in the same boat as you without News+.
| idk1 wrote:
| You don't have to scroll very far at all, there's an ad
| in between every block of news stories in Stocks, you
| only have to scroll once on any stock or the first news
| tab - https://i.imgur.com/ICX0w0I.png - this is just a
| tiny bit of scrolling on the APPL stock.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| In any event, I am upset the advertisement is there at all.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yeah, why does a first party app that embeds news stories,
| and not the official News app, have to display cheap
| clickbait interstitial ads?
| braindead_in wrote:
| > On a long enough time horizon, every large company becomes an
| ad network.
|
| The Paperclip Maximizer Theory certainly seems to be coming true.
| occamrazor wrote:
| And a real estate company, and a hedge fund, and a bank, and
| (this is more recent) a data center company.
|
| Big companies have the scale to efficiently internalize
| activities that smaller companies have to outsource. As time
| passes, they try to turn these internal service companies into
| profit centers.
| uncomputation wrote:
| > But it crushed FB, Snap, and 1000s of small businesses in the
| process.
|
| Ironically, this is far more of a narrative than this guy's idea
| of Apple's "narrative." The idea that banning user tracking hurts
| small businesses was FB's narrative to try and get backlash
| against Apple for its tracking crackdown. That genuinely is a
| narrative because from Apple's decision we have seen that
| consumers (1) prefer not to be tracked (go figure!) but also (2)
| are spending more than ever.
|
| What he calls Apple's "narrative" is actually their substantiated
| history of privacy-protecting technologies. Not just tracking,
| but iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, iMessage E2E encryption,
| keeping many things on-device only. Even the example he gave as a
| gotcha - personalized ads - has an opt out button right there!
| Try opting out of FB's tracking and ads network and see the
| difference.
| Deegy wrote:
| I own a small business that was crushed by iOS14. It sucks. At
| the same time I respect apple's dedication to privacy, even if
| it is profit motivated.
| bobiny wrote:
| Can you elaborate how your business was crushed by iOS14?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > But it crushed FB ...
|
| FB had $11B in profit in Q1 on $30B of revenue, and that's
| after massive drop due to R&D expenses; it's hardly crushed.
| donedealomg wrote:
| cloutchaser wrote:
| No, you are factually incorrect, but getting upvotes for a
| pretty populist view.
|
| As with most centralization or "regulation" (this case from a
| private company), it hurts the smallest companies the most.
|
| Large brand advertisers don't care about granular targeting
| because they have the budget to just advertise to everyone. By
| definition the very smallest advertisers are the one who are
| getting restricted here.
|
| Luckily ATTv2 will actually fix some of this, but that's
| because apple has realised they've killed an entire ecosystem
| which actually hurts the iPhone in the end.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Small business were also crushed when the FDA started
| requiring clinical trials before you could market your drugs.
| The assumption here is that the needs of small businesses
| trumps any ethical or moral concerns. We shouldn't have prop
| up Big Brother so that little Johnny can sell graphic
| t-shirts.
| hyuuu wrote:
| I have interviewed a lot of small D2C brands, either a single
| person company or a family. To say that the banning user
| tracking hurts small business is an FB narrative is not the
| complete story. Businesses still need to do marketing, the
| amount of money is just diverted away, in a less efficient
| manner so they budget has increased and the end users see less
| relevant ads (just like back in early 2000 where all ads were
| penis enlargement/real estate/viagra).
|
| Not justifying what FB did / does, but what apple did, does
| impact the small businesses and end users negatively and it did
| stem from Apple wanting to get a cut of FB's business, there is
| a published email thread for this, it's a known thing.
| jtbayly wrote:
| No end user agrees with you that it affected them negatively.
| They all made the choice to turn it off and still have the
| choice to turn it back on.
|
| We like the trade offs.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The terrifying truth for the future is that advertising
| revenue is addictive and inherently corrupting.
|
| Google makes strategic decisions that are user-hostile,
| because they can't wound their golden cow.
|
| How much more ad revenue expansion at Apple before suddenly
| user privacy's priority decreases a few notches? And on a
| much more locked-down, controlled-platform, no less.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _... consumers (1) prefer not to be tracked (go figure!) ..._
|
| And that means from Apple too!
|
| Note that "tracking" includes data collection. And this is
| where Apple's duplicity on privacy really annoys me - Apple has
| never stopped data collection of their users data. Instead they
| mislead their users by just informing you with a popup that
| your data can be used for personalised ads, but you can opt out
| it - _opt out of personalised ads, not from the data collection
| part_ ( https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-ads-
| target... ). And even this happened because French regulators
| started an anti-trust investigation into how Apple gave itself
| an exception (by ensuring that the "Personalised ads" options
| is enabled by default on ios) while blocking everyone else (
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-al...
| ).
|
| So let's not be under any illusion that Apple is "protecting
| our privacy" by blocking others. They are just protecting their
| bottom lines by blocking their competitors. All this PR spin on
| how Apple blocking Facebook and Google from tracking is good
| for the consumers is bullshit, when all you are doing is
| replacing Facebook and Google for Apple! Remember that once
| they have our data, all they have to do in the future is to
| update their terms of services to use it as they want. This
| kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to strong data
| privacy laws and regulations to prevent even companies like
| Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and create a more
| fair market.
| nojito wrote:
| I'm surprised that people still call Apples stance a "story"
|
| All they are saying is that tracking is ok as long as you just
| ask the end user first.
|
| Here's Steve Jobs in 2010
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-jlF98SzA
|
| Are they perfect? No. But at least they haven't changed their
| stance in 12 years unlike Google et al.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _All they are saying is that tracking is ok as long as you
| just ask the end user first._
|
| And yet, Apple only started informing users of Apple
| "personalised ads" only after a French regulator started
| investigating Apple. More info here - _French antitrust
| complaint alleges Apple allows itself to run personalized ads
| on iOS without getting user consent_ -
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/09/french-antitrust-complaint-
| al... and _iOS 15 now prompts users if they want to enable
| Apple personalized ads, after it was previously on by
| default_ - https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/02/apple-personalized-
| ads-target... ). Yet again proving how we need governments to
| step up and be more proactive to protect us from corporate
| abuse and create a fair market.
| smoldesu wrote:
| People call it a story because it's an obvious lie. The CIA
| has declassified dozens of documents where they admit they
| can pull data right off iCloud/iMessage. Chinese citizens run
| a version of iOS that subjects them to perpetual government
| surveillance. Macbooks send telemetry back to Apple every
| time you launch an app. The App Store sells it's own
| personalized ads. Maybe Apple protects your _security_ , but
| your privacy is something they don't give a rat's ass about.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The problem with that narrative is that apple does not apply
| the same rules to themselves. I actually agree with apple
| tracking should be optional, however why should apple get a
| free pass?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| they do apply the same rules to themselves; that's why
| they've been successful
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Which rules? Because they very famously do not treat
| themselves the same way.
|
| Between built in apps, changing defaults, _different
| tracking rules_ , payment processing, access of hardware
| features, UI/UX guidelines, there's a long list of ways
| apple priorities themselves.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _The problem with that narrative is that apple does not
| apply the same rules to themselves_
|
| What do you mean? Apple tracking is optional, they straight
| up ask when you setup your phone.
| dialtone wrote:
| That's for apps to track you, not for apple.
| bengale wrote:
| They do though, they've asked me on the iPhone if I want to
| have personalised ads, and I said no. Now I don't get
| personalised ads.
| forestwisp wrote:
| This implies collecting data for ad personalization is
| the only means through each Apple tracks you, which
| clearly isn't the case [1]. Some interesting keypoints
| posted here before: [2]
|
| As it currently stands, there is no way to "opt out" of
| being tracked by Apple.
|
| [1] https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=f
| alse&qu...
| shuckles wrote:
| Apple does not track your activity across unrelated apps,
| websites, or the real world. They can offer personalized
| ads based on your interactions with Apple, which is not
| tracking, and they allow you to turn off that
| personalization. What rule are they exempting themselves
| from?
| dialtone wrote:
| oh but they do. All of the apps you purchase, stocks you
| own, news stories you read, location of your phone/mac
| based on precise geolocation, your name, address, age,
| gender, oh and this too:
|
| > We may also use local, on-device processing to select
| which ad to display, using > information stored on your
| device, such as the apps you frequently open.
|
| But who's counting?
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-
| advertisin...
| shuckles wrote:
| Your reference or comment doesn't disprove my point, but
| with the way you wrote it, it seems like you think it
| does? When they say unrelated, they mean offered by
| different providers, not of different purposes.
| j245 wrote:
| That's a pretty loose standard for the word "related"
|
| If you play around with definitions enough, nobody is
| collecting unrelated data I suppose.
| shuckles wrote:
| It's not a pretty loose or arbitrary standard. For
| example, it's a key basis on which data sharing is
| regulated. The claim that it's a weak enough definition
| that it doesn't matter is inconsistent with criticism
| that it's a definition which has materially impacted
| Facebook's revenue.
| j245 wrote:
| I just don't agree that financial data and health data
| are "related" simply because they were both generated on
| a single platform. It's pretty easy to link any type of
| data at that point. All you need is for Apple to develop
| two apps and literally any type of data can be "related".
| At that point the word "related" loses all meaning.
|
| I think you made a poor choice of words. You probably
| meant 3rd party apps not related.
|
| Regardless - I also don't think it's meaningfully better
| that Apple links financial and health data to sell Ads
| vs. Google or Facebook linking the same data from two
| external sources.
|
| Revenue and regulations are not relevant factors in this
| argument.
|
| Tbh if you are charging $1000+ for handsets.. why are you
| trying to scrape my data as-well or show me ads ?
|
| Forget personalized vs. non-personalized. I paid a
| premium, I want an ad-free experience.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > They can offer personalized ads based on your
| interactions with Apple,
|
| Except apple has repeatedly claimed that everything on
| your iPhone _including 3p apps_ is owned by apple.
| shuckles wrote:
| Not sure what you're referring to, and I doubt they've
| said they consider 3rd party app data as fair game for
| their own advertising targeting without invoking
| targeting.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| 1. Apple has claimed (from the epic trial) that since
| they owned the App Store, apps were theirs to sell.
|
| 2. Apple has claimed that any use of the iOS APIs is
| "apple's data" (eg the Apple Pay system for in-app
| purchases)
|
| 3. Apples privacy policy claims that as long as apple's
| data isn't combined with 3P data, they aren't "tracking"
| you.
|
| 4. Apple also lets you opt-out of personalized ads not
| data collection.
|
| Ergo, apple will collect data about you from wherever and
| use it to target ads.
|
| [1] apples privacy policy
|
| _Apple's advertising platform does not track you,
| meaning that it does not link user or device data
| collected from our apps with user or device data
| collected from third parties for targeted advertising or
| advertising measurement purposes_
| fragmede wrote:
| But the scoop; the story here is that Apple _has_.
| hbn wrote:
| Facebook likes to demonstrate how useful they are by showing
| traffic/revenue of people who advertise through them vs people
| who don't, and then say "look! The people who do it are making
| way more money!" Ignoring the fact that they intentionally
| suppress businesses who don't pay them.
|
| It's like if the mafia came by your business every week to
| collect their $1000 to not break your kneecaps and say "look at
| all the happy businesses who pay us walking around, and the
| people who don't do business with us dragging themselves across
| the floor with their hands. We're an important factor in
| keeping people walking!"
| vineyardmike wrote:
| How do they suppress businesses that don't pay? By not
| advertising for them for free? That's a stretch to compare it
| to the mafia...
| scarface74 wrote:
| If I have a page for my business and people explicitly
| follow my page to get updates, Facebook will still not
| surface content from my page as frequently to my followers
| without paying them.
| CharlesW wrote:
| The mafia metaphor seems pretty on the nose to me. If you
| have a page, its posts will not regularly appear in
| followers' feeds -- that is, the feeds of people who've
| explicitly signaled that they want to see your content --
| unless you give Facebook their vig.
| zarriak wrote:
| You can look at many accounts from the mid 2010s but the
| one I can recall the most clearly was FB updated to the
| algorithm and everything was fine. They then began actively
| suppressed people who were posting YouTube links a few
| months later. They told at least Phillip Defranco that the
| reason was they should advertise. They then came back
| months later and instead said why not post your videos
| here. This failed policy years later re-emerged as the
| video push for news organizations where FB intentionally
| deceived them into pushing into video to on the platform
| only for them to later update to honest video view tracking
| and make all of the media companies realize there was much
| less viewership than they were initially told was there.
| echelon wrote:
| Except now you have to pay Apple for the privilege of
| protecting your app store rankings.
|
| If someone decides to purchase ads for "HBN App" searches,
| you're out of luck on your own trademark. You have to pay for
| ads too.
|
| Let me count the ways that we're now beholden to app store
| mafias:
|
| - Downloads are no longer free to distribute
|
| - You have to obey draconian and arbitrary rules, and your
| engineering team has to jump through the hoops constantly
|
| - You can't deploy on your own time. No emergency hot fixes.
|
| - You can't leverage JIT engines and dynamic code (WTF!?) to
| solve for a bunch of headaches.
|
| - You have to learn multiple platforms
|
| - You're taxed (15+%!) for the privilege
|
| The whole concept of app stores and walled garden downloads
| is so inherently broken that the DOJ needs to break up the
| party wholesale for all of the major players.
|
| While I'm happy Apple removed tracking, I also want the
| government to prohibit Apple, Google and the rest from doing
| these other godawful things.
|
| This is harming innovation and productivity _massively_. This
| is bad for small, medium, and even large businesses. Startup
| founders, engineers, and business people alike should be up
| in arms.
|
| We live in the crazy times Stallman warned us about. And as a
| capitalist, I couldn't agree more with Stallman.
| [deleted]
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _What he calls Apple's "narrative" is actually their
| substantiated history of privacy-protecting technologies. Not
| just tracking, but iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email,
| iMessage E2E encryption, keeping many things on-device only._
|
| All these so called "privacy" features are also designed to
| help Apple data mine your personal data too ... the more data
| you funnel through Apple servers, the more they know about you
| and the less data their competitors have.
|
| Remember that once they have our data, all they have to do in
| the future is to update their terms of services to use it as
| they want. This kind of creeping encroachment is why we need to
| strong data privacy laws and regulations to prevent even
| companies like Apple from abusing their consumers trust, and
| create a more fair market. Otherwise all that is happening is
| that you are cheering for the replacement of Facebook and
| Google with Apple ...
| crtasm wrote:
| What data do you think they're mining from people using
| iCloud Private Relay?
| webmobdev wrote:
| Internet activity including Safari browsing, all dns
| queries and all insecure http connections.
|
| Yeah, I know Apple claims that they cannot "see" the data
| as it is funnelled through some other third-party -
| CloudFlare, Akamai etc. ... would Apple be willing to
| reveal the terms of the contract they have with these
| third-parties? How can anyone be sure Apple hasn't
| outsourced datamining or made another PRISM like deal with
| the US government to provide their users data, but through
| a third-party? We'll never know because there are no US
| laws and regulations preventing Apple from doing so.
|
| (And when it comes to privacy that's the key thing - in the
| absence of laws and regulations, it is incredibly foolish
| to believe BigTech's word. They exist only to make money,
| which is their right. Hiding the truth, and exaggerating
| through marketing is an established practice in their
| world.)
|
| Another thing to note is that BigTech are interested in
| promoting these kind of technology only to become
| _gatekeepers_ of collecting and mining users data.
| Currently, some ISP 's collect and store their users
| history. And make money from selling it. In effect, these
| ISP's are potential competitors to ad companies. Techs like
| these (https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/) are
| designed to disrupt these kind of data collection from the
| ISPs and undermine their business of selling data. With
| techs like these, BigTech now again get the upper hand in
| collecting, mining and monetising user data.
|
| It's bad for distributed internet as a whole (where users
| have more control) because now BigTech are forcing
| themselves to be another intermediary, another step between
| accessing the data we users want.
|
| Politically also, such techs are designed to tighten the
| grip of US / BigTech on the internet over that of a
| country's government. That is a big no-no for any democracy
| as a citizen loses the power to question its government's
| policy on the internet (including commercial and privacy
| laws related to it that a government may not be able to
| enforce because of such tech). It also weakens a country's
| security surveillance apparatus. Yeah, I know 'National
| Security' is a bogey that is used by all governments to try
| and curtail our rights. But would you really prefer that
| the usage of some of your rights be indirectly dictated by
| the whims of foreign BigTech or your democracy?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _personalized ads - has an opt out button right there!_
|
| I saw something amusing last week.
|
| It was an ad being played on a local TV station. It had one of
| those little blue swirly "Your Ad Choices" arrow icons in the
| corner that are displayed on advertisements on the web.1
|
| This was being transmitted by a television station over the
| air. What, exactly was I supposed to do with that?
|
| On a related note, getting an ATSC OTA DVR is an awesome way to
| watch television with zero tracking, and 100% portability.
| Record video directly to a USB stick, and transcode to whatever
| device I want for free, and keep it forever, for free. No
| streaming. No tracking. No subscriptions. No network charges.
| Just $35 to Amazon for the box.
|
| I know that not everyone has a lot of OTA choices, but in some
| cities, like mine, there are over 100 channels. About 40 if you
| filter out infomercials, religion, and non-English. I was
| surprised to find there's a 24-hour news,2 and 24-hour weather
| station3 OTA these days.
|
| 1: https://youradchoices.com 2: https://www.newsy.com 3:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Weather
| tbyehl wrote:
| > getting an ATSC OTA DVR is an awesome way to watch
| television with zero tracking
|
| Assuming your TV isn't tracking what you watch.
|
| https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-
| analysi...
| fancl20 wrote:
| While this is a "narrative", there is quite a lot data back
| that this is a fact. You can argue that you trust and fell
| comfortable to give apple the power of crushing any other small
| businesses they don't care based on Apple's own company
| decision.
|
| BTW, you can here the same story from small businesses'
| narrative: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087425495/tech-
| giants-and-ti...
| xbar wrote:
| Yup. Facebook ads were evil. And now that wiener-dog ramp guy
| can't spend pennies to buy millions of impressions on cross-
| app-accessed data, he has to be smarter and work harder to
| get his ad dollars in the right place.
|
| This remains a Facebook privacy story.
| fancl20 wrote:
| Two seperate facts:
|
| 1. Apple did use their market power crush small companies.
| 2. Facebook does have an awful privacy history.
|
| So the question is, do you think improving Facebook's
| privacy must hurt small companies? Another example, Google
| is working very closely with UK's Competition and Markets
| Authority to make sure the plan of replacing third-party
| cookies won't punch other companies at their faces.
| jen20 wrote:
| > to make sure the plan of replacing third-party cookies
| won't punch other companies at their faces.
|
| Companies using third-party cookies deserve much more
| than a punch. They deserve corporate euthanasia.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| These are not separate facts. FB and Google have a global
| surveillance network to track people which is 1) awful
| for privacy and 2) makes it easier to serve niche ads to
| people. Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which
| necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to
| place their niche ads.
|
| You can frame it as "crush small companies" if you want.
| But that framing is just as valid as "Apple's narrative".
|
| Third-party cookies should have never been a thing.
| Google shouldn't get kudos for barely rolling back this
| privacy nightmare they created while Apple gets punished
| for being more pro-privacy and pro-user.
| amf12 wrote:
| > FB and Google have a global surveillance network to
| track people
|
| > Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily
| means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their
| niche ads.
|
| Google provides the exact same privacy preferences on
| Android / Google ecosystem: the ability to enable/disable
| personalized ads, deviceId which is unique to the device,
| can be reset. The ability to delete your data
| automatically. It does not sell or share your data.
|
| I don't like personalized ads, but we can't hail Apple
| for being a champion of privacy when its basically doing
| the same things Google does.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily
| means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their
| niche ads.
|
| ...while rolling out their own alternative, _complete
| with user tracking_.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But if apple's tracking is not sold to third parties, is
| secure, and people trust apple from a security
| standpoint, is it actually bad for individual privacy?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| 1. Lots of ifs...
|
| 2. Facebook (the comparison here)/Google/etc don't sell
| to third parties either.
|
| 3. Is tracking customers the issue, or is _facebook_
| tracking the issue. Most people seem to indicate they
| don't support tracking writ large
| r00fus wrote:
| > 1. Apple did use their market power crush small
| companies.
|
| What small companies? The ones buying/selling my data
| without my consent? Yeah, they can take a long walk off a
| short pier.
|
| Also, TBH some FB and those "small companies" poor
| performance cannot be taken with a grain of salt - cheap
| cash is no longer there given the interest rate hikes and
| collapse of crypto - so maybe the performance has more in
| common with all those startups that lost runway this
| summer than Apple's rules.
| spandrew wrote:
| Of course the maker of a platform used by the majority of
| high-value users would have power. That in itself isn't a
| damning fact. Nor is the narrative that Apple wanted to
| expand its services revenue. FB and Shopify want to grow
| their revenue too. Turns out they're competing on opposing
| principles, and Apple is winning.
|
| A better question is whether or not anyone who isn't in the
| ad business actually gives a flying f about the shift in
| power dynamic. Is it an ABUSE of power? To the majority of
| consumers (by a wide margin) the answer is "NO". They don't
| want to be tracked and have their data exhaust vacuumed up
| for capital gains of billion dollar titans.
|
| So this is the underlying motivation on why nobody cares that
| Apple is flexing hard on ad companies.
| uncomputation wrote:
| Yeah, I read about Ramon and his wiener dog ramps when this
| was first submitted to HN months ago and I said the same
| thing then as I am now. It's bullshit. If Ramon wants to sell
| wiener dog ramps, then the system to do that should be "buy
| adspace when people search for wiener dog," advertise on
| wiener dog enthusiast forums, sponsor videos/meetups, etc.
| Not "create an all knowing digital surveillance system tying
| together user profiles across devices and networks and
| embedding tracking pixels in websites."
|
| So Ramon wants to sell a niche product and that means I have
| to be tracked across the internet so companies can sell a
| digital profile of me? Get real.
| fancl20 wrote:
| I mean, wether this is a bullshit won't affect "Small
| business were crushed by Apple" is a fact? It's a statement
| based on data. How you or apple justifying their behaviour
| is another story.
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| Let's say a chemical is found to cause cancer (outside of
| the state of California), then Walmart pulls all
| offending products from the shelves. Would you say
| Walmart is "crushing" these manufacturing businesses, or
| would you say Walmart is keeping their customers safe?
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| For that analogy to be accurate Walmart would have
| replaced the offending product with their own in house
| brand of the same product.
|
| Which is exactly the justification Apple uses. What I
| don't understand is why people paying upwards of $600 to
| buy those shelves from Walmart and use in their own homes
| are ok with Walmart insisting that those shelves actually
| still belong to them and putting up their own products in
| the shelves you bought from them and installed in your
| home.
| smoldesu wrote:
| In this analogy, Wal-Mart isn't happily selling other
| harmful chemicals for a 30% cut, so I don't think your
| metaphor matches up with reality. I don't trust Wal-Mart
| to make my decisions for me in the first place, this
| scenario would be entirely circumvented if the government
| just had a list of all the chemicals you're not allowed
| to sell. Why do we need to let private corporations be
| the authority on which chemicals are harmful to sell and
| which are not?
|
| But of course, Apple will fight to the death avoiding
| regulation. US authorities don't seem to care, but the EU
| is getting pretty pissed off.
| rq1 wrote:
| Well so be it, we value more privacy than some random
| businesses. Get along.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Yea but people don't spend a lot of time on weiner dog
| forums, even weiner dog owners.
|
| People want to advertise to customers _where the customers
| actually go_. Customers actually go to Facebook not weiner
| dog forums.
|
| Don't use Facebook if you don't like the value proposition.
| I'm guessing most people who complain about tracking on HN
| don't use Facebook properties anyways.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > People want to advertise to customers where the
| customers actually go
|
| But do those customers want to see the advertising?
| People primarily go on Facebook to connect & keep up with
| their friends.
|
| Being able to advertise is not some kind of right, nor is
| being in business. If your business isn't sustainable
| without stalking people (or paying a third-party to do
| that for you), maybe you shouldn't be in business.
| jtbayly wrote:
| If you want to be tracked, go ahead and turn it on!
| That's up to you.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This wiener dog guy story is not compelling. The guy starts
| umpteen businesses with either little value to society or
| little ability to execute, as evidenced by him being paycheck
| to paycheck after starting numerous businesses.
|
| Nobody owes him an audience for ads.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I mean, isn't it "people's desire not to have personalized
| ads driven by cross-site tracking crushed a bunch of small
| business"? This is a market effect, basically.
| ksec wrote:
| iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, all happened _after_ the
| ATT (AppTrackingTransparency). And if you read ATT carefully it
| is designed fist and foremost against Ads. Not Privacy.
|
| And the opt _OUT_ of Personalised Ads? When did HN 's narrative
| changed that opting _out_ was ok? Or even Ads were not evil? I
| can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on HN
| front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >I can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on
| HN front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.
|
| HN is full of Facebook and Google engineers so I doubt that's
| accurate.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I agree that's it's _not_ ok for this to be opt-out. And it
| 's also not ok to show ads in system critical places like the
| App Store (at least without an option to disable them). I
| hope regulators come down hard on Apple and force them to
| open up the iOS platform. Their stewardship of the iOS app
| ecosystem is getting worse.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| tl;dr; Apple stopped Facebook from tracking (for privacy lol),
| now Apple gets more cash in the ad game because they are the
| only ones that can track. Well played Apple.
| ksec wrote:
| I actually would have no problem with that. The move on
| itself, clearly spoken out, ( or not ) would have been a
| great victory against Facebook.
|
| I have a problem with Apple's hypocrisy of doing that but
| labelling it as a move of privacy. And this hypocrisy is only
| the tip of the Iceberg.
|
| But the saddest thing is that most people dont see it. iPhone
| 14 will likely continues to sell like hotcakes.
| kriro wrote:
| If that's the story it sounds like an antitrust investigation
| might be in order. Which to me is ridiculous and makes sense
| at the same time...strange.
| gigel82 wrote:
| monkin wrote:
| They put everywhere "we do not track or share data with third-
| parties" maybe that's the key difference with other ad networks?
| It's not like they follow you around over the web which FB or
| Google does.
|
| I actually don't even see those ads, as they are only in few apps
| and App Store.
| interblag wrote:
| I think this assertion from them is misleading (in the same way
| that it is when Facebook et al make it). If Apple is allowing
| micro targeting then they are implicitly sharing data. E.g.
| let's say they let me buy targeted ads for "dog lovers aged
| 34-39", and then you show up on my website as a lead via that
| campaign, then Apple has just implicitly sold me
| demographic/interest information about you, even if it wasn't
| done as explicitly as if they sent it over in a spreadsheet. I
| fundamentally think that microtargeting and privacy are
| incompatible.
|
| (I'm open to bring shown, however, that Apple's new ad
| marketplace explicitly eschews microtargeting, but I haven't
| seen that so far)
| nr2x wrote:
| See here:
|
| Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution For the Web
|
| https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-
| att...
| nojito wrote:
| All tracking is opt in.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Nope, ATT is opt in, Apples stuff is opt out.
| nojito wrote:
| They literally ask you when you set up the device.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Isn't it opt in when you set up your device ?
| kornhole wrote:
| The best and most effective ads are the ones you don't see or
| notice as ads. They are more subtle and woven into content.
| Adblockers can't block them, and people walk away thinking they
| consumed some useful information.
| chunkyguy wrote:
| They're in the "kill competition" mode right now, so are
| obviously doing different than what others are doing. But what
| are the guarantee that they won't start selling user's data to
| advertisers when they're big enough?
|
| Didn't Steve Jobs say that the 30% cut was just to keep the
| AppStore running?
| cloutchaser wrote:
| OP is also just wrong. Apple is sharing data from all their
| properties like apple news. This is pretty similar to google
| and Facebook tracking you across the web. I just don't see
| how it's better for my privacy if apple sees everything I
| read on their app and targets advertising to me based off
| that, rather than google seeing I visited a news site
| nr2x wrote:
| Please, publishers have been fighting to get more data from
| Apple News and they won't give it. I know for a fact
| several Big Name outlets aren't on Apple News precisely for
| that reason.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The difference between Apple News and Facebook or other
| third-party tracking is that Apple News only tracks what
| you do within their app while FB/etc track what you do
| everywhere on the internet.
|
| I wouldn't actually have any problems with Facebook
| tracking what you do _on the Facebook app_ (or Google doing
| so in their own apps), the problem is when they litter the
| rest of the internet with spyware (Facebook "pixel",
| Google Analytics, etc) and then spy on what people do on
| other domains without clear disclosure or opt-out.
| fnikacevic wrote:
| The problem with that is that Apple's strategy is to draw
| in a user into completely relying on their ecosystem. I'm
| guilty of falling victim to this myself. So even while
| they only track across Apple's apps, the tracking of the
| phone, news, music, app store, watch, fitness, laptops,
| etc. will add up to a monopolistic advantage.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Except that ecosystem is entirely opt in. If you are okay
| with a walled garden that you can't control, that's on
| you. Apple tracking what you do in all of their various
| properties and apps that they've built to try and be your
| one stop digital life isn't perfect but it is IMO
| categorically better than going to a random website and
| having my data get scooped up into my google account or
| my facebook shadow profile.
|
| If I leave the apple ecosystem, they no longer track me
| or sell ads to be displayed to me. That is not the case
| with facebook or google.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The average user is not aware that the walled garden is
| still tracking them, especially with Apple's charm
| offensive about how it is more privacy-respecting
| (probably since their refusal to submit to FBI mandate to
| unlock the iPhone of the 2015 San Bernardino shooter).
| Click-through EULA is click-through EULA, no matter what
| company generates it. That Apple tracking is better than
| that of other, more egregious offenders, is damnation by
| faint praise.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Apple will only let you install apps through their App
| Store, and they correlate your actions in the App Store
| with the ads you click in the News app. How is that any
| different?
| cruano wrote:
| If you don't use the App Store or an iPhone they don't
| track you, do you think I have a Facebook account? Well,
| I'm still getting tracked by them
| shuckles wrote:
| You don't see a difference between Apple using your article
| reading activity in their own News app and Facebook
| creating a shadow profile of you even if you've never
| signed up for their service which collects your entire
| browsing history?
| tqi wrote:
| > It's not like they follow you around over the web which FB or
| Google does.
|
| No, they just follow you all over your phone, which you use to
| go all over the web.
| m3at wrote:
| Link to the full article: https://www.youngmoney.co/p/apples-
| diabolical-plan-control-a...
| kernal wrote:
| I'm looking forward to the discussion on how Apple's ad business
| is more ethical and good for us.
| suetoniusp wrote:
| They are doing it for your own good. Cant you see
| burlesona wrote:
| If Apple is not doing surveillance capitalism, then their
| advertising revenue is better compared to TV/Radio than to
| Facebook. Nobody loves advertising, but society seems fine with
| TV and Radio being paid for by non-surveillance ads.
|
| The problem has been the micro-targeting / retargeting at the
| heart of Facebook and Google's surveillance capitalism model.
| That model enables a lot of direct to consumer small business,
| but it also turbocharges polarization, misinformation, and
| radicalization (as does the algorithmic feed). That's what
| consumers are increasingly looking to opt-out of, and Apple is
| catering to that interest.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Apple's main source of services profit (app store) is built
| around algorithmic feed and targeting ads.
| cageface wrote:
| What does it matter if Apple isn't sharing your data with third
| parties if your entire digital life is within their walled
| garden? You still essentially have no privacy.
| themitigating wrote:
| Is this strawman 2.0?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| iStrawman 13 Pro Max
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I look at all advertising as obnoxious. If it is unbidden it is
| little different from a door to door salesman knocking at my
| door trying to sell me solar.
|
| With regard to Apple not tracking us with PII, that _is_ good
| however.
| jsnell wrote:
| But Apple is tracking you. They build an advertising profile
| using your behavior on iOS and your personal information (and
| at least for me, that included PII that I would never have
| consented to them using for ad targeting; but they just took
| it, and hid the opt-out in an obscure settings menu). They
| then allow targeting of ads based on these fine-grained
| profiles. Just how is this better than FB?
| shuckles wrote:
| First of all, your definition of tracking is different from
| the one used by Apple. Apple's definition of tracking is
| sharing information about an identifiable person between
| unrelated parties. Think Facebook buying all your purchases
| from Mastercard. Apple simply does not do that.
|
| Next, Apple's cohorts and interest information about
| audiences is not nearly as detailed as Facebook or Google.
| And even at a far less detailed level, they have started
| asking users for permission to personalize in a modal. The
| other ad networks have never asked in that way.
|
| It seems like you have a problem with how Apple
| personalizes ads, but that's a different conversation than
| whether they track and if tracking without consent is
| acceptable.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Apple's definition of tracking is sharing information
| about an identifiable person between unrelated parties.
|
| That is a weird definition of tracking! By that
| definition, a single party that follows what you do over
| time is _not_ tracking you?
|
| That is separate from the question of whether or not
| Apple is actually doing this and not telling us (I'd bet
| they are), I'm just saying that that definition of
| tracking reads like it's from a parallel universe.
| shuckles wrote:
| The analogy isn't particularly applicable. If you engaged
| with many Walmart stores and they recorded that, it
| wouldn't be tracking. If a Walmart agent followed you
| into Target and recorded what you did, it would be. The
| Facebook pixel and other status quo data practices in the
| online advertising marketing look a lot more like the
| second than the first. It seems valuable to engage with
| that as an especially bad practice.
| jsnell wrote:
| Yes, of course Apple would try to define tracking in a
| way that doesn't apply to their data collection. But the
| fact is that they are taking my activity across apps, my
| PII entered for non-ads purposes, and allowing ad
| targeting using that. What is the word you'd use for that
| instead of "tracking"? Why is that OK, but the
| advertising profiles built by other companies aren't?
|
| I don't have a problem with how Apple tracks people for
| ad targeting. They're not a particularly bad actor, but
| they're not a particularly good actor either. And a thing
| I do have a problem with is people thinking that _Apple
| isn 't doing all of this_ and giving them a free pass.
| SllX wrote:
| You linked to the privacy policy, so did you miss this
| part?
|
| > Apple's advertising platforms receive information about
| the ads you tap and view against a random identifier not
| tied to your Apple ID.
|
| In other words it isn't tied to your Apple ID, or the
| information linked to it, or the PII you enter for non-
| Advertising purposes. If you go into the News or Stocks
| settings, you can also reset that identifier at-will, and
| as you pointed out, you can also just turn it off.
| Completely opt-out. Facebook's entire business model is
| predicated on not letting you opt-out of tracking and
| being able to link it to a social profile they host,
| whereas Apple can take it or leave it.
| shuckles wrote:
| I think you're trying to argue Apple's definition is
| contrived, but I don't see it. Buying identifiable
| information from a poorly regulated data market is very
| unlike personalizing ads based on first party data.
|
| Apple isn't trying particularly hard to hide that it
| personalizes ads. It puts up a modal telling users about
| it and giving them a choice in the apps where it
| advertises. I'm not sure why you imply that Apple is
| fomenting confusion.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Does Facebook buy purchases data from Mastercard? Genuine
| question.
|
| But meanwhile Apple doesn't have to buy it. Apple Card
| and their wallet gives them access to it directly,
| without having to involve third party.
| shuckles wrote:
| Yes banks and large advertising networks have data
| sharing agreements, the details of which I'm not privy
| to: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/07/
| your-ba...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That they have PII would be a surprise to me.
| cycomanic wrote:
| What do you mean? Apple is literally running your phone,
| they have more PII data on you than any pretty much any
| online add network (now they might not use all of it
| although I believe they use a lot of them. But they
| definitely have it) .
| nightpool wrote:
| Can you give some examples / links for this? it's almost
| impossible to search for, with everybody talking about
| Apple's IDFA changes
| jsnell wrote:
| Here is Apple's privacy policy on ads:
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-
| advertisin...
|
| > We create segments, which are groups of people who
| share similar characteristics, and use these groups for
| delivering targeted ads.
|
| > We may use information such as the following to assign
| you to segments:
|
| > ... The music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you
| download ...
|
| > ... The topics and categories of the stories you read
| and the publications you follow, subscribe to, or enable
| notifications from ...
|
| > ... Your name, address, age, gender, ...
|
| > ... your App Store searches and browsing activity ...
|
| > ... information stored on your device, such as the apps
| you frequently open ...
|
| There's a lot more, that's just a sample of the data they
| use. The only thing they promise explicitly either not to
| have or not to use is:
|
| > No Apple Pay transactions or Health app data is
| accessible to Apple's advertising platform, or is used
| for advertising purposes. Apple does not know or make
| available to advertisers information about your sexual
| orientation, religious beliefs, or political
| affiliations.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| basically FLOC; that's quite different than selling your
| PII to third-parties or targeting you based on your
| individual profile (i.e., you visited xxxx store so now
| you all of a sudden see tons of adds from that online
| store)
|
| not saying it's good, but it's probably the least
| intrusive way to do it; and many users like it. I'd
| rather never see an ad, but if I do have to see any, I'd
| prefer to see ads for watches or cycling gear (which I
| like) rather than clothing or pick-up trucks.
| nightpool wrote:
| > (i.e., you visited xxxx store so now you all of a
| sudden see tons of adds from that online store)
|
| They do that also:
|
| > When selecting which ad to display from multiple ads
| for which you are eligible, we may use some of the above-
| mentioned information, _as well as your App Store
| searches and browsing activity,_ to determine which ad is
| likely to be most relevant to you.
|
| > We may also use local, on-device processing to select
| which ad to display, using information stored on your
| device, such as the apps you frequently open.
|
| (emphasis added). They don't track your activity across
| the web, since they can't, but they do track your
| activity on Apple properties, including your iPhone.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > We may use information such as the following to assign
| you to segments
|
| My take is that this information is used to give you some
| sort of cohort identifier that is itself devoid of PII.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Doesn't really matter if the segment you, if they also
| store the data they need to do the actual segmentation.
|
| Besides, depending on how many segments you are assigned
| to, you're probably the only one in the intersection of
| all of them.
| hyuuu wrote:
| dont all ad platforms work this way?
| nightpool wrote:
| Isn't that the definition of an "advertising profile"?
| no_way wrote:
| Ironically that's kinda similar what Google FLoC was
| supposed to be.
| reaperducer wrote:
| That's not ideal, but it's certainly much better than
| every other ad company out there.
|
| Apple can at least enumerate the ways it profiles you in
| plan text, and most of it makes perfect sense. (Though
| I'd be happier if they excluded age and gender.)
|
| The other companies profiling information requires a
| massive spreadsheet, or even a JSON dump that no human
| being can make sense of. And that's just for their
| internal data, not the data they sell (oops, "share with
| trusted partners").
| dialtone wrote:
| That's not how it works. Every ad vendor has a privacy
| page with this stuff spelled out in the same way.
| JediLuke wrote:
| edgyquant wrote:
| Why is the assumption that it isn't? Apple has been a lot
| better at privacy than places like google. Not betting on this
| being the one exception.
|
| They absolutely are better if it's true they don't do any
| tracking
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| On the other hand, Apple has been much much worse at privacy
| than Google if you are Chinese.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/
|
| > We never sell your personal information
| thomasahle wrote:
| Neither does Google or Facebook:
| https://m.facebook.com/help/152637448140583
|
| Both of them hold on to your data and allow advertisers to
| target based on it. Just like Apple does.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The parent's claim was that Apple is a lot better at
| privacy than Google. It looks like they are basically the
| same. You could just as accurately claim that they are
| all equally bad.
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > But it crushed FB, Snap, and 1000s of small businesses in the
| process.
|
| This definitely has "a think of the poor advertisers" vibe to it.
|
| Apple does have advertising, but I don't think they engage in the
| dark patterns of the afore mentioned companies.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| malshe wrote:
| Yet another Twitter thread without any supporting evidence for
| the numbers. The claim here is that Apple "surpassed" $3.5
| billion in annual revenue from the ad network. This is the
| headline so obviously I would like to know how the author got
| this number. However, all we get is irrelevant information.
|
| Below m3at has linked to the original article. It says Apple's ad
| revenue in 2019 was $500 million. Source? It links to an article
| on another website, which linked to a 2018 AppleInsider article
| (https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/22/apple-looking-
| at-...). That article states:
|
| "An analyst is predicting that Apple's Search Ad business will
| generate $500 million in fiscal year 2018 alone"
|
| Somehow this estimate from 2018 is now suddenly the actual ad
| revenue for Apple in 2019. Next, I checked where the $3.5 billion
| number comes from. The closest I could get to this number is from
| this Bloomberg article:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
|
| It claims:
|
| "It's [Apple's ads group] generating about $4 billion in revenue
| annually"
|
| Again, there is no source for this information. So we are
| discussing a Twitter thread that's designed to generate outrage.
| The irony is that it did not get much traction on Twitter but
| found its audience at HN!
| nr2x wrote:
| Totally agree - these takes are fucking stupid. Apple is
| basically just enforcing GDPR and other laws on iOS. Most of
| the shit these privacy trolls talk about "mean old Apple"
| blocking revenue are already full-on illegal in many places
| kornhole wrote:
| Almost any corporation can look like a saint by comparing
| themself to Facebook. Apple and Microsoft are playing the long
| game. They both collect a ton of data about everybody who uses
| their products and properties. They are definitely expanding
| their ad business behind the scenes. It is difficult to get
| exact advertising numbers since they obscure revenue by lumping
| it into 'services' like many data companies do. Direct sale of
| data to third parties is also classed as services.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Nice research. Exactly, without a source I seriously question
| if $3.5B is correct. $500M maybe, that not a much money as it
| once where. Given the places where ads are even a thing, $3.5B
| seems excessive.
| malshe wrote:
| > Given the places where ads are even a thing, $3.5B seems
| excessive.
|
| I agree. I see the ads primarily in the News app and it is
| almost always the same 2-3 ads. Of course, I am not going to
| extrapolate that to all the Apple News readers. That's why I
| was curious to learn how the OP on Twitter found these
| numbers. In their 10-Qs and 10-Ks, Apple has been
| consolidating the revenue streams and expenses under larger
| items (e.g., advertising spending is now not disclosed
| separately but only as a part of SG&A expenses, iPhone sales
| by model are no longer disclosed). As such, finding out their
| ad business is not easy by any means.
| mrweasel wrote:
| How is that even possible? I use Apple products daily. iPhone,
| Mac and an AppleTV, where is Apple ad network even a thing? I see
| someone mention the stock app in macOS, there's typically an ad
| in the App Store search (which kinda suck) and then there's the
| in app ads. In app has ads are pretty much a give away that the
| app is going to suck, so I don't bother with apps that doesn't
| have a price. If nothing else the ads will always look misplaced
| and detract from the UI, making me want to use it less.
|
| My point is: You see so few ads in the Apple ecosystem that I
| seriously question if those $3.5B is correct. Still, I'd prefer
| no ads, and I fear that Apple will be forced to ramp up the ads,
| once the shareholders see it as a major profit center to be
| exploited.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think it's mostly app store. Amazon's ad service is now bring
| in 9 billion in revenue, there's tons of money to be made by
| taking over mindshare at the point of sale.
| kderbyma wrote:
| it's amazing....windows turned to ads...mac suddenly takes over
| and becomes massive in the personal computer space.....sure
| M1...but imho...it was because of how aggressive Microsoft became
| with its adware....
|
| people want freedom....now Apple is about to step in big gaping
| hole it should have seen coming but the glittering pile of gold
| is distracting them...
|
| 3-5 years...washed up?
| rogerkirkness wrote:
| I'm so happy for them! They must be thrilled.
| plantain wrote:
| > But it crushed [snip] 1000s of small businesses in the process.
|
| There's a lot of comments here suggesting this is a narrative
| from FB/Snap, but it really isn't. I was previously able to
| target adverts directly to the tiny audience of potential users
| of my product, and the return on those adverts was nearly 10x.
|
| Overnight it entirely evaporated as a source of new customers and
| I don't know how I'd build a niche business again without it.
|
| Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing
| value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product
| otherwise. Who was hurt?
| scarface74 wrote:
| The same way that it was traditionally done - trade shows,
| advertising on sites and in podcasts that cater to your target
| audience, search ads, etc.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Operating a business with a single point of failure is never
| wise.
| justapassenger wrote:
| You never operated any business right?
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Operating a business with a single point of failure is a risk
| to be considered in the risk:reward analysis. For many
| businesses, it is a reasonable risk that enables unique
| solutions.
|
| It's important to observe that the parent didn't suggest
| regretting building that business even though the customer-
| acquisition channel evaporated. They merely said that option
| is no longer viable for future businesses.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect you are being disingenuous here, and you know the
| issue was not the nominal harm your niche business caused by
| advertising, but rather the perceived danger of the entire
| infrastructure created that made this possible for you.
|
| This is a classic issue of technological capability vs societal
| interest (i.e. we can do it, but should we?), and there are
| rarely easy solutions. Some of the trade offs may just mean
| that some business models aren't as viable - this in principle
| seems reasonable to vast majority of people.
|
| The good news is that if your business model has any non-
| superficial value there are bound to be other ways to reach
| people and make a go of it, if so desired.
| ska wrote:
| votes suggest this came across snarky, wasn't intended. I was
| serious about the last part , if there is real value there
| almost has to be other, even better ways to reach people.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Most of the products I like, I didn't discover through ads.
|
| I'm ok with your business failing if it can't work without ads.
|
| The problem here is that ads are not banned, but that they are
| now the exclusivity of Apple.
| piyush_soni wrote:
| >> _Most of the products I like, I didn 't discover through
| ads._
|
| That's what you're made to think. :)
| cwkoss wrote:
| I'll bet $5 the 'niche business' is drop shipping, and the
| ads are targeting customers already looking for the product
| who would have found it for cheaper if not for the ad.
| plantain wrote:
| You owe me 5$.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| If you don't mind sharing...
|
| - What was/is your business?
|
| - Which customers were you going after?
|
| - What other marketing / advertising approaches did you
| try?
|
| Edit: I'm guessing weather forecasting
| (https://skysight.io/) is the business.
| plantain wrote:
| Specialist subscription weather forecasting. I don't
| really want to make myself into a case study here - just
| sharing my experience that the Apple-induced small-
| business-advertising-pinch is very real.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| Thanks for the info. No worries; I appreciate the
| perspective you added.
| ksec wrote:
| For the past 5-6 years, 95%+ of HN comments believe Ads are
| completely useless. And small business making money with ads, (
| Facebook or not ) are Facebook or Social Media's narratives.
| Had your account not been one from 2011, you would have been
| labeled as shill for Social Media.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| To me the problem is that the only upside to targeted
| advertising seems to be "discover this niche product from a
| small business that can only exist because it's now cheap to
| advertise directly to the community it serves", but the
| targeted ads I get are all mega brands trying to convince me
| that their product is better than the competition by making
| me laugh or shocked. Where are all the niche products I was
| promised?
| praestigiare wrote:
| The people who have obviously made their preferences clear that
| they prefer not to be profiled and tracked that way, because
| the possibility is still there for those who consent to
| tracking.
| justapassenger wrote:
| It's merely a corporate story (from both sides) that people
| made informed choice about that. It's full of BS everywhere.
|
| Apple fighting for privacy is BS (look at China). Ads
| networks not affecting privacy is BS. Reducing effectiveness
| of ads not affecting small business is BS. Moving monopoly in
| ads market from one group of companies to others being good
| for people is BS. People understanding impact of all of that
| on their privacy, small businesses, cost of digital apps, etc
| is BS.
|
| Both sides spend many millions of dollars to try to swing
| public and regulatory view of the problem.
| plantain wrote:
| I like this phrasing - I don't think users made an informed
| choice to be tracked, or an informed choice not to be.
|
| They were victims both times of big tech power plays.
| Jcowell wrote:
| > Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am
| providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my
| product otherwise. Who was hurt?
|
| Probably. But if the means in which you can connect with those
| customers requires a surveillance apparatus that infringes on
| the privacy of the unconsented than perhaps the question that
| should be asked is does your business have a greater right to
| exists than the privacy of those customers (I'm guessing the
| reason you can't reach them anymore is because they decided to
| no longer be tracked.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's a moot-point. Switching away from AdSense isn't going to
| protect you from surveillance, it's just going to change the
| pool of customers buying your information. All your iCloud
| data is a few clicks away for most NSA employees, and I don't
| think it's a stretch to suggest that they also have root
| capabilities on your iPhone. No matter how you slice it,
| Apple isn't going to give you privacy. The data you hold
| near-and-dear is already in adversarial hands. The game is
| lost before you even put your chips on the table, that's the
| consequence of agreeing with TOSes for more than a decade.
| Nobody wants to admit it, but privacy is _literally
| unattainable_ in a digital era.
|
| What Apple sells is security. They do a fairly good job with
| security, and their whitepapers are almost industry-leading.
| Their commitment to privacy is entirely lip service though,
| and the volume of their marketing seems to indicate the
| emptiness of that promise.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| > All your iCloud data is a few clicks away for most NSA
| employees, and I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that
| they also have root capabilities on your iPhone.
|
| There is still value for most people in being able to limit
| personal data access from many data brokers even if that
| data is still potentially accessible by the NSA. It's a
| spectrum and not a binary outcome.
|
| You are right though our rights to the data we create for
| most services have been relinquished via the TOSs that no
| one is really expected to read. It's certainly broken.
| However I still think there are steps one can take to
| resist cross linking of that data by companies; it does
| take a bit of effort though which isn't realistic for most.
|
| While I think Apple's choice to support privacy are
| ultimately self serving it is still beneficial for many
| consumers (at least for now).
| bjtitus wrote:
| What part of opt-in advertising IDs is only lip service to
| privacy? Seems entirely about privacy and very little about
| security. Similarly, iCloud Private Relay is completely
| privacy focused and isn't really about security at all.
| Both of these things provide real value to consumers and
| dramatically limit data collection as evidenced by reports
| from Facebook and many others in recent quarters.
|
| NSA data collection isn't anywhere close to equivalent to
| private companies storing it. The NSA programs could be
| shut down if the political will existed. Private companies
| with all of this data have absolutely zero oversight under
| US law at the moment.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > is a few clicks away for most NSA employees
|
| I'd rather have NSA employees having access to my data
| rather than NSA employees _and_ employees of the hundreds
| /thousands of players in the digital advertising ecosystem.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Who was hurt?_
|
| Someone too lazy to buy ads directly.
|
| If you know your audience, then you already know the places
| where you should advertise. Contact them directly. I've placed
| ads directly with dozens and dozens of web sites, podcasts,
| vloggers, and others. Very often they're more than happy to
| take your money because they get to keep all of it, instead of
| a tiny percentage sent back to them by Google, Facebook, etc.
|
| Business is hard. Welcome to business.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If you know your audience, then you already know the places
| where you should advertise.
|
| And if your audience is a very odd niche, and you can't find
| where they congregate, go old school and make a place for
| them to congregate.
|
| If you can't figure out how to market your wiener dog slide
| without facebook, create a weiner dog site with information
| about weiner dog health, pictures of weiner dogs, stories
| about weiner dogs, a weiner dog forum (or at least a link to
| a weiner dog forum you have created on reddit.) Slap your
| brand all over everything. Distribute other weiner dog
| products along with your weiner dog slide.
|
| If you couldn't find anywhere on the internet that weiner dog
| owners congregate (and you really made an effort), eventually
| after you do this every weiner dog owner will know about you
| either directly or through word of mouth.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| That's way more difficult than just asking Facebook who
| already knows, though. You could go out of business before
| you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have.
|
| I'm not saying that makes Facebook's invasion of their
| users' privacy alright (I personally haven't pondered it
| enough to have a well-thought-out opinion), but I really
| disagree with the grandparent comment that the only
| businesses that suffered negatively from Apple's move did
| so because they were lazy.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >That's way more difficult than just asking Facebook who
| already knows, though. You could go out of business
| before you manage to build that audience, if you ever
| would have.
|
| Cry me a river. If your business can only be sustained by
| a 3rd party implementing a massive, global, impossible to
| avoid and opt out of tracking and surveillance apparatus,
| I genuinely don't care if it fails. Weiner dog slides
| aren't that important.
| pid_0 wrote:
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